Movie Review: Turning Red (2022)

by Evania Cheung (5E)

I watched this movie during my special summer holiday. The red pandas in the movie are very cute and funny. The main character in this movie is called Meilin, all of her friends call her Mei Mei. She is a 13 year old, Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto. She and her best friends: Miriam, Abby and Priya are fans of the boy band 4*Town, but Mei’s mum, Ming, doesn't like 4*Town. One night, Mei has a vivid nightmare involving red pandas. When she wakes up that morning, she has transformed into a large red panda. She hides from her parents and discovers that she transforms only when she is in a state of high emotion, though her hair remains red. Ming, and Mei's father, Jin, explain that Sun Yee has granted this transformation to protect her daughters, and every female family member since then has also transformed when they came of age. This has become inconvenient and dangerous in the modern age, so the red panda spirit must be sealed in a talisman by a ritual on the night of the Red Moon, the next being in a month's time.

Mei tells her friends about this, Abby is shocked because there is a 4*Town concert on that day. They suggest Mei escape from her parents. Ming allows Mei to resume her normal life, but refuses to let Mei attend 4*Town's upcoming concert. Instead, the girls secretly raise money for the tickets at school, exploiting the popularity of Mei's red panda form, while lying to Ming. To cover the last ticket, Mei agrees to attend Tyler's birthday party as the red panda. At the party, Mei is upset to discover that the concert will be held on her ritual night. In the midst of her rage, she attacks Tyler when he insults her family, frightening the other children. Ming discovers Mei's activities and accuses her friends of corrupting and taking advantage of her. Ashamed and afraid to stand up to her mother, Mei fails to come to her friends' defense. Mei's grandmother Wu and her aunts come to assist in her ritual, to Ming's dismay. As Mei prepares herself, Jin finds videos she took of herself as the red panda with her friends and tells her she should not be ashamed of this side of her. During the ritual, as Mei's red panda form is about to be sealed, she decides to keep her powers and abandons the ritual to attend the concert at the SkyDome.

Her friends forgive her for her actions at the party, and they discover Tyler is also a 4*Town fan. However, Ming becomes so enraged that her talisman shatters after Mei inadvertently breaks it during her escape from the temple, causing her to transform into a kaiju-sized red panda that disrupts the concert, intending to take Mei back by force. Mei’s aunts pushes Ming into the astral plane and starts to do the ceremony. The other women conceal their red pandas in new talismans while Mei decides to keep hers, with Ming accepting that she is finding her own path. Later, as the Lee family raises money to repair the damage caused at the SkyDome, Mei and Ming's relationship has improved, as Mei balances her temple duties – where her red panda is now an attraction – with spending time with her friends and Tyler. My favorite part of this movie is when Mei Mei transforms into a panda, her friend's reaction is funny. This movie is the best Disney Pixar movie I have seen. Hope you will like this movie too!